To the Manor Born

by Peter Rimmer

  Anyone that got to know Barnaby found the veneer of civilisation was just a cover. None of which mattered at the start. He was rich, young and charming. Aristocratically good-looking from an ancient line that traced straight back to the invasion of England by William the Conqueror.

  On the surface, he was everything everyone wanted him to be. Women found themselves fighting for his attention. He was their knight from the glory of war and they desired him.

  By coincidence, his party to Clara’s included Brett Kentrich who had come and gone sexually in his life by that first time Barnaby visited Clara’s and thought he recognised Barrington Madgwick through the blue fog of cigarette smoke and the cacophony of sound.

  “You know that piano player keeps looking at you, darling?” he said to Brett for something better to do. He was bored. There was nothing new for him among the women even casting his eye around the supper club. Brett had been a brief conquest to get his own back on Harry Brigandshaw. To try and make himself feel better about Harry marrying Tina Pringle. The fame of actresses was two a penny for Barnaby St Clair. Barnaby knew that Harry, before he went back to Africa, had put up Brett in a smart flat, buying the lease for her as a way of assuaging his guilt at the gap in their ages. Sleeping with Harry’s mistress had been a brief catharsis. Harry had won the only woman who had ever got under his skin. Tina Pringle was to Barnaby the one that got away. The mistress he wanted in a flat of his own. To use as he wished. There was something special about wanting the same girl from the age of five, even if she was old Pringle’s daughter who looked after the two trains a day at Corfe Castle railway station.

  “Do you ever hear from Harry Brigandshaw?” he asked ignoring his own question.

  “Didn’t he marry your girlfriend?” asked Brett, sweetly. “And no, I don’t go for piano players even if they are good-looking. A girl has to think ahead in this life, Barnaby.”

  “How goes the show?”

  “Full. Every night. It’s becoming a bore.”

  “He’s very rich… Or rather, he will be one of these days. His father is Clive Madgwick, the shipbroker… Ah, you’ve heard of him, darling… I met him during the war in slightly different circumstances. I did hear on the grapevine he had refused to go into daddy’s business but this is ridiculous. Playing the piano in a supper club. How common.”

  “You really can talk rot, Barnaby.”

  “Ask Clara. You come here regularly… Ask Clara.”

  “Why on earth would I be interested?”

  “The way you smirk at him.”

  “You really are a bastard, Barnaby.”

  “No I’m not but Harry Brigandshaw really is a bastard… Did you know Harry was once my brother-in-law? He was married to my sister Lucinda before she was killed… Clara! There you are. Come and talk to us, darling. I have a little scandal for you.”

  Clara was smiling. It was her job to smile.

  “How did you catch such a rich piano player? Barrington Madgwick, the heir to The Baltic Shipping Exchange.”

  “Don’t be silly Mr St Clair. That man at the piano is Christopher Marlowe.”

  “Ask him to join us at the break. I think he would like to meet Miss Kentrich… Please ask the wine waiter to give him my card.”

  Barnaby was enjoying himself. He liked making people squirm. First, he intercepted the piano player’s look at Brett. Looked at Brett patronisingly. Then back at the piano player, this time with a smirk. Then Barnaby wagged his finger and turned back to the duck breast on the large plate in front of him. Suddenly he was hungry. He liked enjoying himself at other people’s expense. He was still smiling as he fed pieces of the flesh into his mouth.

  * * *

  Brett was still looking at the piano player. She had learnt the first night she slept with Barnaby he never made a joke. Her mind went back to that night.

  * * *

  “Sorry, darling, that was just to get at Harry. I hope you’ll write and tell him. She belongs to me.”

  “Who, Barnaby?”

  “Tina Pringle.”

  “Oh, you mean the new Mrs Brigandshaw. Shame on you, Barnaby, for being jealous. Jealousy is so pathetic… No, I’ll get a taxi. And by the way. By my standards, you are lousy in bed.”

  “So are you.”

  “Tit for tat then.” Brett had been smiling. She had found the Honourable Barnaby St Clair’s weak spot. The insult had been worth having… The rat wanted Harry Brigandshaw’s wife. “Poor old Barnaby,” she had said as she slammed the door to his bedroom in Piccadilly. Downstairs she had called herself a taxi, and on leaving looked up at Barnaby framed in the third-floor window. She gave him a wave. She had long lost count of the number of men she had taken to bed. To Brett, it was just recreation. Harry had been nice. Convenient. The man who had put money into the musical so they would give her the female lead. The flat in Regent Mews was nice. The trouble was, she was as raging jealous of Tina Pringle as Barnaby St Clair was of Harry Brigandshaw.

  * * *

  “He’s gone,” she said out loud coming back to the present in Clara’s, her mind still swimming in memories of Harry Brigandshaw.

  “Not really, darling. He’s coming over.”

  Brett was crying.

  “What are you crying over?” asked Barnaby.

  “Spilt milk… Please excuse me, everyone. I’m tired. The show took it out of me tonight… Good night, Mr St Clair, I really do hope we don’t meet again.” She was smiling sweetly again. The actress in control.

  “I say, old chap, what did you say to Brett?” she heard a drawling voice from behind. Then she was out of the smoke-filled room.

  Clara had brought a taxi to the kerb outside on the road. Clara was good. Brett thanked Clara.

  Inside the back of the taxi on the way to her flat in Regent Mews, she began to cry again. Vividly, she remembered singing Greensleeves to Harry Brigandshaw on the balcony of the flat where he had asked her to sing something.

  “Driver, no. Take me to the Ritz… I don’t want to go home.”

  Being the toast of the London theatres had changed nothing. All the men had changed nothing. Always when she went home the flat was empty however many people were there. Harry had always given her so much, wanting so little in return.

  “Brett, you’re an actress. The African bush is no place for you. I’m a farmer. Colonial Shipping belonged to my grandfather. London and big business have no place for me. I’m an African with a white skin. I could never live my life here any more than you could live your life on Elephant Walk. I know because I’m so much older. I know, Brett.”

  At the Ritz, Brett gatecrashed a party of theatregoers eating supper after a show. She knew one of them… They welcomed her with open arms. Even with all the new introductions, she could still hear Harry’s words ringing in her head… And why did he always bring up their age difference? Age had nothing to do with it. Damn Tina Pringle getting herself pregnant. The announcement of the marriage had been in The Times. The announcement of Anthony Brigandshaw’s birth had been in The Times. She could add up. The bitch had seduced Harry on board ship and got herself deliberately pregnant.

  “Are you all right, Brett?” a man asked.

  “Of course… Come on and dance. I love the Charleston.”

  Once again, she was brimming over with false smiles.

  * * *

  Christopher Marlowe had looked at the small white card with the Honourable Barnaby St Clair’s name on it and had gone cold all over. On the card were his real name and an invitation to join the table. St Clair was smirking at him and then looking at Brett. She was more beautiful than ever before. He wanted to tell her he had watched her show six times from the gods, way up back in the Drury Lane Theatre. Once a week Clara gave him a night off. Once a week Christopher stood in line at the theatre door to buy the cheap ticket. Six times, he had been lucky. Six times, he had watched her all evening through opera glasses never taking his eyes off Brett.

  She was so young. So vibrant. So full of life.
Alive like no other person he had seen… His obsession grew with every performance of The Golden Moth. All the women night after night at Clara’s paled in comparison.

  Clara was looking at him with a funny look. The set was finished. Christopher stood up, his legs out of control. He found himself walking shakily across the empty dance floor towards the table. Halfway across, Brett got up abruptly and turned her back on the table. St Clair was leering at her.

  Changing direction, Christopher walked through the tables to the staff bathroom. The bathroom was just through the kitchen door. For some reason that had only once occurred before in the war, Christopher was sick.

  “You all right, old cock?” asked a male steward.

  “Something I ate.”

  “Not at Clara’s.”

  “Weren’t you serving at the Brett Kentrich table?”

  “Right up close to her, I was. Right up close. A real peach.”

  “Why did she leave in such a hurry?”

  “Heard her tell some bloke she hoped she’d never meet him again. I think she was crying. You never know with actresses. They can turn on and off. The bloke was cocksure of himself. Like he was enjoying himself at her expense. Liked to have punched him one but can’t do that at Clara’s. Never get another job in London. Blokes like that aren’t worth it anyway… You ever see her show?”

  “Six times from the gods.”

  “Then you know what I’m talking about. She’s a real peach… You got a bit of it on your trousers, cock. Better wipe it off and wash your face.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Place is packed solid tonight.”

  When the man left the room, Christopher recognised what had made him sick. Cold fear. Not of being killed this time. Of being rejected.

  * * *

  As he walked back to his piano, ignoring St Clair, Christopher realised Brett Kentrich knew his real name and wondered if it made any difference. He knew what she thought of his piano playing. That much he knew.

  * * *

  They were packing up the instruments when Clara called him into her office.

  “What was that all about, Christopher?”

  “What, Miss Clara?” he said innocently.

  “The card. St Clair gave it to me to give to the waiter. He knew you during the war.”

  “Sorry, Miss Clara. It made no sense to me.”

  “Said you were a captain.”

  “Oh, now that’s absurd.”

  “That your father is chairman of the Baltic Exchange.”

  “That really is absurd. Would I really be playing your piano if my father was that rich…? What regiment am I meant to have been in?”

  “The Royal Dragoon Guards.”

  “A case of mistaken identity, Miss Clara. You need a large private income to be an officer in The Royal Dragoon Guards.”

  “Don’t you want to tell me, Christopher? I won’t bite.”

  “Not really.”

  “What are you running away from?”

  “We are all running away, Miss Clara. Mostly from ourselves. It’s the nature of life.”

  “You’re obviously educated. Well spoken. And playing my piano. Why?”

  “Don’t believe everything said by Barnaby St Clair. He has a bad reputation.”

  “So you do know him?”

  “Only his name on the card you so kindly told the waiter to give to me.”

  “You are an enigma, Christopher Marlowe.”

  “Thank you, Miss Clara. I’ll take that as a compliment… May I go?”

  “Of course… And don’t be late on Monday.”

  They were both smiling at each other. Very gently, Clara covered Christopher’s right hand that was resting on the back of the chair. A gesture of compassion his mother had never done once in his life.

  “Do you have any children, Miss Clara?”

  “He was killed during the war.”

  “I’m so sorry… There were so many, with so little point. It rather changes a person’s view of life.”

  * * *

  The next day the supper club was closed. It was a Sunday. The seventh day for rest and going to church. The theatre was closed. It was Christopher Marlowe’s one night off.

  The war in France had blown away any idea he had had of religion. The very idea of two opposing armies praying to the same God for deliverance was absurd to Christopher. One side or the other was going to die.

  The last Sunday in September was beautiful. A day for Christopher to walk in the park or better still take the train into the English countryside to smell the flowers and feel the reason for him being alive. If there was a Creator, Christopher found him in the countryside, not in a man-made building with man-made music to condition his mind. He did not sing the praises to his Creator. He let the birds do that. They were better. Every one of them he had ever heard could sing in tune.

  The ritual on a good day was the same. Christopher retrieved Gert van Heerden from the box room where Gert lived without a window: the poor man was becoming a wreck. A stage manager without a stage to manage, all he could afford was a shilling a week for the box room that gave him a mattress to sleep on with a foot of room to the right for his few possessions.

  They walked to Waterloo station across Hungerford Bridge where Christopher bought them each a third-class return ticket to Ashtead station, to the small village where Christopher had been born. There was no chance of their meeting his family as none of them ever took a train on a Sunday. Sundays the family went together to St Giles church in Upper Ashtead, the other side of the village to the railway station.

  Off the train, they walked down the platform to the footbridge and climbed up over the railway lines. In front were Ashtead Woods with some of the oldest oak trees in England. Behind, across the common, was the village pond. Always Christopher imagined the cricket field. He could just see the elm trees that surrounded the village cricket ground. He could imagine himself as a boy and a young man, playing cricket. Like everything else in his life, he liked playing cricket but was not very good. They put him in to bat at number nine and let him field on the boundary just because they liked having him in the team. Once he caught a ball on the boundary to everyone’s surprise. Mostly he daydreamed, not even conscious of the game played, just the ambience he loved of village cricket.

  “It’s such a civilised game,” he told anyone who asked what he was doing. “If the rest of the way we lived was so civilised we would all have a wonderful life. If the ball is going to the boundary, the fielders stand back and appreciate a fine shot. They never chase after the ball. Village cricket is not competitive. Just a game to be enjoyed by everyone.”

  Sometimes, from the top of the footbridge with the wind in the right direction, when they walked back to catch the train on a late summer’s evening, Christopher thought he could hear the chock sound of the bat hitting the ball and he was sad. The cricket and the woods were the only things he missed from his years of growing up before he went to war.

  They had packed their picnic in the attic in Christopher’s room off Shaftesbury Avenue before setting out for the train. The picnic basket was the only thing Christopher had ever stolen from the house where he was born.

  Just before going to work on Saturday was the time to buy from the barrow boys who lined the Portobello Road touting their wares. Fruit and vegetables that were not going to last until Monday were sold off cheap on Saturday afternoons. Mostly the two of them lived off vegetable soup from a big pot for the rest of the week. A few bones and leftover vegetables made a grand meal every day. The big pot, boiled up on the one gas ring next to the gas fire kept them healthy. The snag was the pervading smell of boiled cabbage. Sometimes they managed to sweep up fresh herbs with the leeks and turnips. They call those soups Royal Soup fit for a king.

  Gert van Heerden was an inveterate optimist. One day he was going to stage-manage a grand show. To Gert, the idea of the grand show was more important than the money. If Clara needed extra kitchen staff when someone went
sick, Christopher took Gert to the supper club. It paid the rent on the box room and chipped in for the vegetables. Like Christopher’s father, Gert’s was very rich.

  The family lived near Stellenbosch in the Cape of Good Hope in a beautiful Cape Dutch farmhouse that had been in the van Heerden family for ten generations. Gert had attended Stellenbosch University where he studied literature in Afrikaans. There were some beautiful Afrikaans writers, he told his English-speaking friends. Herman Charles Bosman was a classic. All his characters were so real they walked out of the pages. The theatre came with the books. Gert would like to have written plays. He had tried many times and failed. He could picture the set as clear as anything but could never tell a story. Most of his writing was devoted to describing the sets. He went to all the plays put on in Cape Town, hanging around backstage after the shows. He was stage-struck by the sets. On one show, they asked him to help.

  The show was out from England touring the colonies. Cape Town was the last leg. When the company went back to England Gert tagged along, forgetting to go back to university. His father had given Gert an allowance for his last year at Stellenbosch which paid for his ticket. He wrote to his father from London.

  His father wrote back saying an education could be found in many places. That now Gert was working for a living he did not require an allowance. Nearly all the van Heerden family wished him happiness. There were many van Heerdens. One or two, more or less, made little difference. The grape harvest had been good on the farm that year. All was well in the valley. The mountain was still beautiful. They all looked forward to seeing him again when he came home. Only Uncle Johan mentioned the Anglo-Boer War. He had cursed Gert for living with the enemy. Uncle Johan had been drunk at ten o’clock in the morning and none of the family had taken any notice.

  Gert was twenty years old the previous March when he moved into the box room next to Christopher Marlowe. They had become good friends. The one thing Gert van Heerden was best at was being happy. Whatever he did amused him. In everyone he met, he found something to like. When he was freezing cold in the box room, he thought of the sun and how nice it would be to be warm again. All the girls wanted to mother him. When he staged his first show, he was going to find a larger room. Even that was not an overwhelming matter. Once he was asleep, his dreams took him far away. To Africa. To his room on the second floor in the barn-like family home. The room with a view of the duck pond. The blue hills far away. The blue sky puffed with white clouds. The smell of wattle drifting into his room of the morning, the window open… Asleep in the box room he could see all these things. Three pairs of socks and sleeping in his overcoat in the first months took him into summer and the trips with Christopher Marlowe down to Ashtead Woods and the picnic under the oaks.